A wide variety of multimedia content is currently available to consumers. Digital content ranges from low-bandwidth, unidirectional data streams such as low-fidelity audio-only content, through high-bandwidth, bi-directional data streams that support interactive, real-time, virtual game environments.
Many consumer devices and services are available to generate, present, transform, store, replay and otherwise manipulate multimedia streams. Televisions, digital video recorders (“DVRs”), game consoles, cable television receivers, Video On Demand (“VOD”) services and even cellular telephones are capable of providing rich media experiences for consumers.
Media distribution has long been supported by revenue from product advertisements and “commercial breaks.” However, many consumers prefer to avoid commercials by switching to a different media channel during a commercial break, or by fast forwarding through commercials that appear in a recorded stream.
No system has been put forth that automatically, upon detection of a commercial break, will cause a context switch to enable other services, programming or devices to gain control of the output of a display, speaker, process or system during the period of the commercial break then rejoin with the original programming context when the commercial break is over.